Embracing Deception
by Alexandrite Moonlight
Summary: [One Shot] Perhaps part of him had hoped to escape that fate, to deny and hope against what he knew he could not change... But one thing he would have changed was the person that held her. Rating for safety


**Disclaimer**:

_Yeah, that's right! It's mine! All mine! All of them! Pft! Sure… tell that to my bank account and my student loans, my minimum wage job and the name on my birth certificate. If I owned Inu Yasha, I would be too busy with the manga and anime to write fan fiction (fans are scary!) and Sesshou-kun would have a much more prominent role in EVERY episode and Miroku would have been laid by now! (no children though!) _

_Bottom line: It isn't mine! (but don't tell me that…)_

_This is my first Inu Yasha fan fiction. Enjoy and let me know how you found it._

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It was dark tonight and the light from the thin sliver of a moon aided little. In fact, it almost seemed to make the world around him darker.

That; however, could be just a consequence of his mood.

The dark of the moon would hit them soon and all of them would be vulnerable. The strength of the group, their protection and edge would be gone for that night. Tension always seemed to gather on the eves of those nights and tonight was no different. It had been strung so tightly through them that it was almost a physical force pushing even as it pressed in on them.

But…

Tonight had been different.

The balance of the group had shifted over time - it had been an inescapable eventuality - and he had known that things could stay as they were. Perhaps part of him had hoped to escape that fate, to deny and hope against what he knew he could not change.

Even if he could change it, he wasn't sure if he would.

But one thing he would have changed was the person that held her.

It could never have been him, he knew that. It was selfish and impossible to even have considered that ending, but he had. A part of him had wanted it, thought about taking what was offered and letting time sort out the mess on its own, but no… That one shred of dignity and honor that had survived within him kept him from hurting her further.

That didn't mean that **he** had a right to her…

The forest was dark, but the night was warm and the wind was light. He could see though. Narrowed eyes watched the rhythmic rise and fall of the fabric beneath the tree.

If one didn't know what one was looking at, the slow movement of the dark material might have been mistaken for a sway of shadow or a trick of the night, but he knew exactly what he was watching.

What he was hearing, mixing with the gentle sigh of the wind.

The color of the cloth was indistinguishable in the dark, but he'd seen it so often in the light of day. A deep rich colored material that he had always imagined to be quite heavy, but it fell over the bodies like silk. Light enough that it didn't stifle with heat, but heavy enough to mold to the contours beneath. Mountains and valleys, dips and angles that he knew were legs and hips, and as the two moved the material shifted and flowed like water.

Tonight it was slow, but there was a tension about the movements that spoke of fast and furious paces that might be or might have been. How often had this ritual repeated? How? When?

He knew the why though…

Sighs and soft gasps rode the breeze and filled his head. He had once wondered what it would be like to hear her in the soft glow of lovemaking… in the fires of passion, but thought was all it could be. Still, he had never imagined anything like the soft noises she made, the way her breath caught in her throat each time her lover moved in her…

She was so beautiful, really - lean and well-defined from years of roughing around Japan.

From the darkness he let his gaze travel from the moving sea of dark material up… up to where it pooled around their waists.

If it weren't for the tone of their skin he would almost have thought them to be one being the way they moved - bodies arching into the motion, seeking more contact, deeper penetration.

The pale expanse of her stomach brushed his with each thrust: teasing, pressing, and then dipping in as they pulled back. Her skin wasn't perfect; there was that star-shaped scar she carried from the Shikon no Tama, and the odd-n-end pale slashes from one too many close calls with demons, but it was healthy and in the night it glimmered with perspiration.

He knew it was soft, how could it not be. There was so many moments in their journey together to that promised paradise in her arms.

_The warmth of her hand in his as she comforted his lonely thoughts… _

_The soft caress of skin as she soothed his injuries.. _

_The secure circle of her arms every time she embraced him…_

Every touch, every embrace… it was all there to tease him, to taunt him, haunting him with what he should not have. Not what he _couldn't _have, he reminded himself, but what he **_shouldn't_** have.

It might have been him with her in the dark of the night. His body entwined with hers, connected so intimately. It could be his chest that her breasts pressed against - nipples taunt against his skin, his shoulders that her fingers grasped in desperation - nails biting deeply, and his name that she moaned into the forest.

If he hadn't already known who it was that she had claimed as her lover, it would have been all to plain by now.

It was a name he knew all too well. The name of a person he had come to know and to trust by his side, something he thought he would never do. People were too fleeting and frivolous to bother with the formation of lasting attachments. So it was strange to realize that he now had not one but several of those bothersome attachments. They had all earned his trust, each of them, in their own way.

He knew that this development wasn't totally unexpected and that it shouldn't hurt, but it did. After all, he'd seen the way they had looked at each other in odd moments, the protectiveness with which he had shadowed over her since the beginning, and the laughter that always followed her when he was near.

He could still trust him in battle, still depend on him with his life, but it didn't make the loss of her to him any less painful.

No matter how irrational it was… or how loudly the voice in the back of his mind shouted that she had never been his to lose. And that right there had been his fault as well.

His thoughts had wandered from the sight before him, but even from this distance he could hear the quickening rush of the male's breath. Sharp pants became desperate grunts, and he almost turned away from the scene when her moans turned to whimpers of pleasure. He did turn away briefly at the sudden rush of arousal that flooded him when her nails ran down the length of her lover's body.

Biting back a groan he willed his body to behave. It would do none of them any good if he were discovered.

Kagome wasn't Sango, she didn't have the physical strength or battle experience, but he'd seen her angry more times than he cared to recall. The weight of the beads around his neck would never let him forget just how painful her anger could be.

She was powerful in her own right, of course, he reminded himself as she cried out into the night. She was a miko and a woman - passionate and powerful, brilliant and kind, and not for the last time he wished that things could have been different between them. That he had more receptive and less tied to the past. She was all that he could have wanted in a mate, all that he had thought he had already found. Yet now that reality had cleared away the mist from his memories, now that he knew he'd lost her, he wanted nothing more than to go back to their beginning.

He'd do so many things differently.

He watched as her lover followed after her into bliss, their bodies melting into a contented embrace.

Silently he moved away from the sight before him, but he carried the image with him.

The moonlight covered the two, accenting the rich bronze of his skin and the pale sunlight of hers. Hair and skin glittered with perspiration where it wasn't covered by the rich violet robes that the priest had pooled around their waist. It was an intimate moment, one that would remain with him for the rest of his life - burned into his memory. It wasn't the intimacy of their bodies together, but the expressions on their faces that caused his stride to quicken as if he could out run the echo of pain that filled him.

It was perfection and completion.

It was… Love.

Of all the things, why love?

Any other situation he could have handled: sexual exploration, lust, curiosity, even revenge against himself were ones that he expected. Those he had planned for. Love was something that he had never believed them to find with each other.

It hurt. Deeply.

And even as he stepped into his lover's vision, even as he held her close, seeking the lie and what peace it could give, he accepted the truth…

_They were simply shells of what they had once been - nothing more. And shells could not love. Could not truly live. And when they died…_

He held her tighter as if her proximity would change reality.

_They died alone._

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_Thank you for reading this story. Please review and let me know your opinion, it has been a while since I last posted. _

_If you are waiting on a previous story... my sincerest apologies, I will get to them the moment inspiration allows. Enjoy what I do have for now._


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